Wireless networking is becoming ubiquitous with an ever-increasing number of offices, homes, and public facilities allowing users to communicate with access points over wireless local area networks (WLAN), e.g., according to an 802.11 standard or other wireless applications. This ability to communicate wirelessly grants users the freedom to move around their local environments while communicating through their wireless devices. When users wander outside of range of their access point, however, their connection degrades and may be dropped, unless the wireless devices react to the changing environment by locating another access point in-range that can support the connection.
Many wireless devices include hand-over functionality that attempts to switch access points when users travel out-of-range. In transportation deployments, such as on trains, cars, and buses, wireless devices are typically required to switch access points or wireless frequencies fairly often to maintain a connection. Since this hand-over functionality is reactive in nature, rapid environment changes with high signal-level fluctuations, such as in the transportation deployments, cause wireless devices to unpredictably drop association to access points, often making a re-association with the dropped access points difficult.